I heartily agree that time limits aren't the best solution to the false sense of urgency in the game. I like exploring areas fully, interacting with as many NPCs as possible, and taking time to manage my inventory, so I don't want to feel rushed. Plus, you would end up missing half the story due to the ridiculous amount of times you have to camp to see all the convos and cutscenes with party members. I didn't realise that on my first playthrough, so I camped infrequently, and I'm finding out now that I missed a ton of interactions.
I don't like the use of the trite fake urgency either. However, because most players have been conditioned to ignore in-game urgency, that's even more reason not to have a time limit, as it will end up being an unpleasant surprise for people. As others have suggested, it's better to make it more clear early on in the story that the tadpole is in stasis and finding a "cure", while important, is not urgent. I think it would be better to address the story-related issue with a story-related solution, rather than add game mechanics that may frustrate a portion of the player base (and significantly change the experience).
I also agree with the OP and others who have said that the companion dialogue queues (and cues) need to be improved. This playthrough, I'm getting much more of the companion dialogues, but I have to purposely avoid doing any significant things together. This is something I didn't know to do on my first playthrough, and other new players won't know to do it either (and shouldn't have to).
If they had a specific order for companion interactions and each one that you acquire just queued up, then they wouldn't get out of order. Some of them that don't indicate an end to the night could also double up (i.e. more than one companion interaction per night). Perhaps some of the companion discussions could even happen outside of camp if they don't need a cutscene (right after a short rest?), and it would be helpful if companion cues could be more obvious (e.g. say something to you without forcing you into a dialogue).
On a side note, this would be a "nice to have" feature to increase immersion: instead of big yellow exclamation marks, companions could do something else to attract your attention in camp if something is on their mind. Like pace back and forth or have a very different sitting or standing pose than their default. If their dialogue would lead into a more involved dialogue/cutscene (e.g. Gale admiring his double or Astarion looking up at the stars) then perhaps they could be in their starting pose for that (which would suggest that you to go over to them to see what they're doing).